Monthly Archives: July 2011

American Village (our new working title) was selected for Good Pitch San Francisco – six films by some pretty big names in documentary have been chosen to pitch to foundations, organizations and NGOs, along with Sundance, PBS, and a few other television broadcasters – with a specific emphasis on both funding (yes, please), and on the good the film can do in the world.

We will be up in San Francisco for four days refining our pitch down to perfection and getting feedback from some amazing folks. We might even get a few dollars thrown our way.

Even more importantly, we’ll be thinking about and planning how to get the message of Restorative Justice out into the world, through our film, in the most effective way possible.

Thanks to so many of you wonderful friends, family, supporters and even a few strangers – we made our goal! Within two weeks, actually, we had raised over $10,000. This money will go directly to our editor to get us towards the POV deadline. We won’t know anything until much later this year, but we’ll be updating the site with information as we have it.

The outpouring of support has been both overwhelming, and a real, serious shot in the arm to us as we’ve been slogging through three years of shooting, often with no light visible at the end of the tunnel. Without any perspective left, it’s been a massive relief to get the feedback that we are making something meaningful and worthwhile.

Thank you so very much to all of you for being a part of this film – and this message!

We are thrilled to announce we are already more than halfway to our $10,000 goal! The past week, we’ve had an incredible outpouring of support from so many lovely people across the WORLD**, and it’s been truly humbling, to say the least.

We know money doesn’t grow on trees, especially these days. We cannot fully express how grateful we are for the support, and how excited we are to read and hear about reactions to the project.

If you had hoped to donate to the “Rough Cut for PBS Drive,” it’s not too late! We still need more than $4,000 to get our film to PBS, and even the smallest donations make a huge difference.

Thank you so much for reading – we have an exciting announcement to make in the next few days, so come back soon!

**Thanks to the exquisite Natalie Mera Ford, we are now an international campaign!

We found out the end of last month that we were one of a handful of finalists for POV’s Diverse Voices Project Co-Production Fund. That’s a lot of words to say that we almost got a big chunk of money to finish this film from documentary film’s most prestigious and distinguished outlet. It’s a huge honor, and a testament to the powerful message of this film.

Although we weren’t selected this round, the Series Producer asked us to re-apply in two months with a new rough cut, and expressed nothing but POV’s belief in the project, and ongoing interest.

Thus, we are turning over every rock and pebble to find the money to pay a great editor to get us there!